Anchors aweigh on $55M terminal construction

The revitalization of the Cape Liberty Cruise Port in Bayonne has entered the next phase.

Since reaching an agreement with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey on May 27, Royal Caribbean Cruises is set to continue its multi-million dollar project to create a state-of-the-art port, said Harrison Liu, a spokesman for Royal Caribbean International.

The agreement will allow the cruise company to build a $55 million guest terminal that will include 125,000 square feet of space for check-ins, customs and immigration and luggage processing.

Construction of the terminal began in March and it is expected to be completed November.

The next phase of the project will be the construction of a 900-car parking structure adjacent to the guest terminal, Liu said. Construction of the parking structure is expected to begin later this year.

The new terminal will accommodate Royal Caribbean’s newest cruise ship, Quantum of the Seas, which will begin departures from Cape Liberty in November, Liu said. The massive 167,800 ton, 4,180-passenger cruise liner, dubbed by the company the “world’s most technically advanced ship,” is still under construction.

Royal Caribbean has been using Cape Liberty as a terminal for several of its cruise liners since 2004.

The Port Authority’s Board of Commissioners originally approved a plan to allow Royal Caribbean to develop the Bayonne port in 2013.

After the original approval, then-Port Authority Deputy Executive Director Bill Baroni, who resigned in December over the George Washington Bridge scandal, said the new terminal is expected to attract more than 600,000 people every year and jolt Bayonne’s economy.

“When a ship like this calls a port, that ship brings about $1 million a trip to the city in local economic activity,” Baroni said at the time.